Versace / Fall 2013 RTW

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Sharp studs and wicked spiky nails, shredded sheer panels snaking down dresses pierced with metal bars, tees rawly silk-screened with Medusa medallions, enough studded bondage bras and second-skin glossy black PVC for any number of devotees of BDSM to snap on and slither into. . . . All this, according to Donatella Versace after her rebel-chic fall show, isn’t punk, but something called vunk, which, wild guess here, is the amalgam of V-for-Versace and the unk of punk. She could have just as easily called it glunk, smashing together glam and punk, because, of course, in Donatella’s hands, that’s what her reading of the seditionary 1970s was all about; taking street culture with the greatest snarl of all time and clashing it with the values of Versace, which is about the three e’s of fashion—extravagance, exhibitionism, and elevation—as in, why wear a pair of those tighter-than-tight PVC jeans with a biker jacket when they work so much better with a zebra-stripe mink or a swaggering greatcoat with gilt buttons and metal-tipped lapels? (This isn’t the first time, of course, that the house of Versace has looked to this particular moment of pop culture; one safety-pinned black dress from Gianni in the mid-90s, and Elizabeth Hurley’s career was made overnight, quite literally.)

“I didn’t want it to be literal,” Donatella said, just seconds after joining in an impromptu backstage chorus of “Happy Birthday” for stylist Edward Enninful. “Punk was the last movement that really combined music, style, and attitude, and I wanted to translate that for today. It’s elegant and glamorous, but it’s not perfect, because, you know,” she started laughing, “women can’t always be perfect.” That, in essence, is what this show was really about. Beyond old school punk, beyond pre-empting the theme of the upcoming Costume Institute gala exhibit in New York in May, it was about granting women the opportunity to enjoy wearing something wild and fun, if beautifully executed and finished in that most Versace of ways. Aside from the opulence of fur, there were a ton of draped dresses cut with the same skillfully wielded scissors that have produced everything else that’s come from this house. Or the plethora of luxe accessories given a harder edge, such as the cuffed ankle boots bristling with spikes, or the studded purses that discreetly sat under the arm, or the heavy silver chains that twisted and turned around the décolleté. (Just one word of advice; don’t go flying with any of this lot—you’ll be at security for hours.) Yet there was one final question to ask Donatella: The Clash or the Sex Pistols—who did punk better? She started to laugh again, and said, shutting the question down to any further debate, “The Clash.”